Class Action suit against SZ-battery claims

Don't get too excited, there isn't one yet.

But while I'm not that pissed about it, I have to admit that if they claim 5.5-7 hours and not a single person has gotten over 4.5hrs (most getting closer to 4hrs) the it sounds like fraud to me.

Anyone a lawyer who wants to comment?

Unfortunately the potential damages are too low for anyone to pursue this case, but it is very much a scam.

 

From what i have heard it seems the problem might be with Windows XP. Would be interesting to know what poeple might get from Vista beta or once released Full version of Vista?

 

The amount of times I have suggest someone to try Linux is uncountable. But fine I will do it when I get my SZ.
Literally no one is even getting 4 hours, closer to 3.

 

If there's one thing I've learned, battery life claims are usually inflated.

I can get over 4 hours on stamina mode with the the brightness lowered to 3-4 and by deactivating my sound, dvd-rom, etc...

 

Oh and I was playing Half-Life 2 using the Nvida card with full brightness and my battery was gone in about 1hr.

 

Its too bad the switch from speed to stamina isn't instant. It would be so much better if it didn't require a restart. Not that it makes much difference anyway. I wonder if sony is going to work on this. Maybe they did release the laptop pre-matureley.

 

The fe is advertised at 2-4 but Most people seem to get between 2 and 2 and a half hours.

 

All battery claims are inflated. They generally run on the lowest brightness with zero activity. I'd like to see some sort of standard for real world usage, but that's never going to happen.

 

I'm starting to think the 5.5-7hr claims are likely with the extended battery. I have gotten 2:45 with brightness on full, volume on full, and playing a dvd. The spec I looked up for my 120P says 2.5-5.5hrs with the standard battery, which sounds pretty reasonable based on what I tested.

 

Sony sells the laptop installed with XP so shouldn't their quoted life of 5.5-7hrs be based on how they package it?

Vista's initial versions were apparently MUCH worse on battery life. All the heavy 3D work and memory footpring was buring up the cpu in a recent article I read.

 

Claims that say "Up to...(7 hours)" are often correct, but only under a very constrained set of circumstances.

For instance:
If you turn the screen down to its absolute lowest setting...
-Turn off access to the optical drive...
-Turn off wireless...
-Turn down the fan (meaning also the CPU)...
-Turn on "adaptive" CPU clock speed...
-Use teh built-in video card...
-Turn off all awareness of extra gismos, like the camrea...sound-card...
-Adjust so that the hard drive goes into stand'by mode rather than a constant spin...

==Once you do ALL of the above...you just might begin to get CLOSE to their claims. The trouble is...NOBODY would actually use their computer for anything that mattered very much under the above-described "adjusted state."

This is why anything ad statement that starts with, "up to..." is almost universally misleading--even if true.

Its like clothnig store commercials where they advertize "The entire store is mark down...up to 70%" On the face of it, the consumber pictures a HUGE amount of stuff for only 30% its original price. In actuality, that store needs ony to have a SINGLE...SOLITARY...item somewhere that was marked at 70% off. 99.9% of the REST of the store could be only 10% off (for example), and their advertised claim would STILL be technically true.

I suspect the Sony battery claims are similarly misleading...though MAYBE technically true under certain, extraordinarily-unlikely circumstances in actual use (referring to ALL of the bulleted downward adjustments above).

-Mark

 

I get about 2.5 hours in speed mode with wlan on, and around 3.5 in stanima with brightness down a little. But I just have to ask: How many people here actually have the extra large battery?

 

I added something that Mark and Sony forgot to add! See above in bold!

 

I bought the extended battery when from a Sony retail store after I purchased the SZ. Sony had a $75 rebate going, the battery was $299. On a recent flight from DC to LA (5 1/2 hours) I ran the SZ with the extended battery for about 3 1/2 hours. I was renaming MP3 files and doing other hard drive intensive things. Screen brightness at about half and stamina on. When I was done I still had about 50% left. I have not had a chance to play DVDs from coast to coast yet.

I must say though that I have done the registry fix for the Windows XP USB problem and updated the BIOS to the 2/26/06 BIOS update from Sony support. I did not do the March BIOS update.

I mostly use the standard battery set to the same settings as AC. No heavy 3D games, but normal office and surfing type things. I usually get about 3 to 5 hours depending on what I am doing. Closer to 5 if I turn WiFi off. The one thing that kills the battery length is the boot process. I have seen it eat up to 10% of battery life with just booting with WiFi on.

I moved from the T series to the SZ because I felt the T series screens were too small. The one selling feature was the ability to get "Up to 7 hours" to match the specs on the T series. So far I am happy with a faster processor, faster graphics chip and larger screen. So far I am not disappointed in the battery life.

 

I have had success in improving the battery life of the SZ120 by:
1) Updating the BIOS to the latest version on the website,
2) Setting the Sony Vaio Power Manager to "Ultimate Battery." To succesfully set this mode you have to go into the Windows XP power controls then open the Sony Power Manager then close the Windows XP control panel before setting the machine to "Ultimate Battery." It seems as if you can have one setting for "Stamina" mode and one setting for "Speed" mode.
3) Using the "S2" key to lower the fan speed, and
4) De-charging the notebook completely before plugging it in to charge.

-UR

 

Forgot tip 5. Use Hibernate mode instead of Stand-by mode.

-UR

 

The clock speed/voltage will go up under load if you set it to that; you should set it to "Battery Life" which will lock it to the lowest voltage/clock speed to minimize power consumption.

I've never got that to work in Windows: it's always hitting the disk even at idle. There's probably some service I can disable to stop this, but I've never been able to track it down.

 

Silly question:

Does anyone have times with linux? afaik, power management in linux is pretty good (I used to get approx 2 hours on a constant basis with my old dell x200 in linux and about 1:30 in windows)

 

If the PC's completely idle the hard drive can go into standby, but doing absolutely anything, even looking at the start menu, will wake it up.

 

A question for the extended battery users.

What kind of battery life are you getting with the screen close to max, wifi on, and just doing office work and surfing the net? That's what I intend to do and not really game.